Just Call Me Jake

If someone asks you how much a single baby's life is worth to the United States Air Force, tell them about the night an American fighter squadron scrambled a supersonic interceptor for a five-month-old boy. On December 23, 1986, five-month-old Andrew Baumann was dying of heart failure in California after his parents had already lost his baby sister to the same condition. Near midnight in Fargo, North Dakota, a donor heart finally became available, but the civilian medical jet broke down on the freezing tarmac with the four-hour survival window ticking away. Civilian doctors could not ride in a fighter jet without ejection-seat training and high-altitude pressure suits. Sixteen minutes after a desperate 2:00 a.m. phone call to the North Dakota Air National Guard, First Lieutenant Robert Becklund climbed up the ladder of a McDonnell Douglas F-4D Phantom II. He strapped a red-and-white plastic cooler holding the tiny heart directly into the back ejection seat. At 3:06 a.m. on Christmas Eve, Becklund blasted off alone into the dark winter sky and pushed his twin-engine fighter close to six hundred miles per hour across fifteen hundred miles. He touched down at Moffett Naval Air Station at 4:43 a.m. Even after seven and a half hours outside a body, that tiny heart beat strong inside Andrew's chest, and the boy grew up to graduate college and get married. A superpower is measured by how fast its deadliest machines fly to save its smallest citizen.

The biggest mistake tourists make in Japan is dragging a fifty-pound suitcase up and down subway stairs. Watch how Japanese travelers board the bullet train. They walk on with a cup of green tea, a small shoulder bag, and both hands free. Where is their luggage? It is already in the next city, waiting for them. In Japan, the system is called Takkyubin, recognizable everywhere by a logo of a mother black cat carrying her kitten gently in her mouth. When you check out of your hotel in Tokyo at eight in the morning, you hand your heavy suitcase to the front desk, fill out a tiny slip, and pay about twenty dollars. You can even send it straight from the corner convenience store. Then you spend the entire day wandering through mountain temples or eating street food with nothing on your back. When you walk into your traditional inn in Kyoto that evening, your suitcase is already standing neatly in your room, wiped clean, with the handle turned toward you. In fifty years of handling millions of bags a year, lost luggage is virtually unheard of. A society runs smoothly when you can hand your belongings to a stranger at a convenience store and know they will beat you to your hotel.

Today I issued an Executive Order designating “Seminole Wind” by John Anderson as the official anthem of Florida. I have also directed the @FLSecofState to erect historic markers in the City of Apopka depicting John Anderson’s contribution to Florida’s heritage. In addition, I have tasked @FLDEPNews to work with the @SJRWMD to designate wildlife drive and trail system within Lake Apopka North Shore as the John Anderson Wildlife Drive and Trail System.

Democrat Nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas James Talarico: “What if we ran our world like we run a kindergarten classroom? Because at the end of the day, aren't we all just really big kindergartners?”

If we score 6 points vs Pitt tomorrow I’ll cut off my foreskin

SKYE BLAKELY. WORLD ALL-AROUND CHAMPION. 🥇.